News:

If you have an urgent forum-related problem (can't log in, can't reset your password, forum is acting weird in a way that an administrator needs to know about right away, etc.), please send an email to rhemuthcastle (at) deryni (dot) net, which will reach the full admin team and whichever of us can get to it first will do our best to fix it. Keep in mind that all the members of the entire active mod team have at least one full-time job, so it may take a little time sometimes to get problems resolved. Thanks!

If there's a problem with the forum that isn't urgent, post it in the Site Support sub-forum (under the Off Topic section), and we'll get to it as soon as we can.

When Stefan appears in his servant of St Camber disguise to the imprisoned Derry, I thought that was a tremendous risk for our High Deryni. But I always wondered why pg 246 HD" Then the man was backing toward the door, staring at him strangely". Was it the St Camber medallion Derry was wearing? And I wonder why he couldn't somehow warn them about the ring that Derry was wearing which was being used as a survelliance monitor by Wencit.

Irritatingly my copy of High Deryni is inaccesible at the moment but are we told that it is Stefan Coram or might it be Saint Camber himself? If the latter he might be bound by rules from Another Place that prevent him from giving too explicit information regarding Derry's ring. If it is Stefan Coram, given that Duncan and Morgan are now in the midst of an army on the move, trying to contact them might simply be too dangerous especially since they are in close proximity to Warin de Grey.I should think that either would be startled to see a St Camber medal on a human.

Logged

"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts."As You Like It.

My understanding of the St. Camber medal is, Alaric had his through his mother, Alyce. He had copies made for Duncan, Kelson (and possibly others). I think at this point in the story line, Derry is actually wearing the "original" as a means for Alaric to communicate with him. I am not seeing from the story line that Stefan Coram would be aware (or concerned) about the medal Derry is wearing.

In regard to the ring, when Derry gets "re-bound" (King Kelson's Bride ?) nobody notices the new ring for awhile. So, it is possible that Stefan might not think to check. All through KK's works, "dark" magic is not assumed &/or noticed by those who spend their energies on the side of the "light".

Stefan is definitely NOT Camber, however. During Morgan's "conversation" with him, he denies it, just referring to himself as a humble servant of Camber.

Hi there,I was wondering why Stefan as stated in HD "Then the man (Stefan as St Camber disguise) was backing toward the door, staring at him strangely" Thats why I mentioned the medallion, something caused Stefan to behave that way. Unless Stefan picked up psychic residue from the altar plate that the medallion was made from? If I remember right, the medallion was made from an altar plate associated with Camber. That would certainly cause Stefan to behave that way

« Last Edit: October 09, 2017, 07:38:58 pm by Lochiel »

Logged

"And as they tread the ruined Isle,Where rest, at length,the lord and slave,They'll wondering ask, how hands so vile,Could conquer hearts so brave?"Thomas Moore

Stefan is definitely NOT Camber, however. During Morgan's "conversation" with him, he denies it, just referring to himself as a humble servant of Camber.

I'm not convinced that this is definitive. The earthly Camber was capable of living a lie for many years as Alistair Cullen when he deemed it necessary, so verbally deceiving Morgan, possibly, as Tenworld suggests, so as not to alarm or confuse Morgan any further, seems well within the bounds of probability. If the enigmatic figure encountered by Kelson (and later by Kelson and Dhugal) in QfSC is anything to go by, our peripatetic Saint also seems to enjoy being cloaked in an air of mystery.

Logged

"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts."As You Like It.

Stefan is definitely NOT Camber, however. During Morgan's "conversation" with him, he denies it, just referring to himself as a humble servant of Camber.

I'm not convinced that this is definitive. The earthly Camber was capable of living a lie for many years as Alistair Cullen when he deemed it necessary, so verbally deceiving Morgan, possibly, as Tenworld suggests, so as not to alarm or confuse Morgan any further, seems well within the bounds of probability. If the enigmatic figure encountered by Kelson (and later by Kelson and Dhugal) in QfSC is anything to go by, our peripatetic Saint also seems to enjoy being cloaked in an air of mystery.

On the other hand, while Camber was capable of living a lie as Alister Cullen, the author also makes it very explicitly clear throughout the story that this was in fact what was going on. It is never left as an exercise to the reader for us to guess that "Alister" might actually be Camber. So I think if Stefan was meant to be an alias for the actual Camber manifesting in Alaric's and Duncan's time, KK would have made this very clear for us as well. Even when authors use an unreliable narrator type of character (i.e., one whose statements can't be taken at face value because they are hiding something), there will be hints in the story to clue readers in that you can't take what that character says as actual truth. But in Stefan's case, I don't see anything in the story that I can point to as an obvious authorial hint that we shouldn't take Stefan's words at face value because he's actually Saint Camber.

Did any of the Servants of St. Camber escape the purging of the mother house/chapter house and flee eastward? If possible, couldn't a member of the Serv. of St. Camber invaded the minds if others...to make them subconsciously more sympathetic to the Deryni as a whole?

Did any of the Servants of St. Camber escape the purging of the mother house/chapter house and flee eastward? If possible, couldn't a member of the Serv. of St. Camber invaded the minds if others...to make them subconsciously more sympathetic to the Deryni as a whole?

Don't know about the second question--I suppose it is possible--but as to the first, I think it is at least implied that the hidden community of St. Kyriell's in QfSC is descended from Deryni who went into hiding during the time of the Regents, including survivors from the original Servants of St. Camber.

Did any of the Servants of St. Camber escape the purging of the mother house/chapter house and flee eastward? If possible, couldn't a member of the Serv. of St. Camber invaded the minds if others...to make them subconsciously more sympathetic to the Deryni as a whole?

Don't know about the second question--I suppose it is possible--but as to the first, I think it is at least implied that the hidden community of St. Kyriell's in QfSC is descended from Deryni who went into hiding during the time of the Regents, including survivors from the original Servants of St. Camber.

And now that I've had some time to think about the second question a bit more, I think we see some examples of this in the Heirs of Saint Camber books, for instance when Prince Javan influences Hubert in KJY and when HM Rhys Michael influences a few minds in TBP. The problem is that in order to prevent others from realizing that Deryni tampering (or at least Haldane tampering) is taking place, they didn't dare influence those human minds too much, to the point that others might become suspicious about a complete personality change. But a Deryni might be able to subtly nudge someone's thinking in a safer direction without anyone else being the wiser about it, at least if the human they are influencing isn't likely to have his mind Read by another Deryni looking for evidence of tampering. It would just be a major "red flag" if, say, all of a sudden Edmund Loris were to become Deryni-friendly after decades of persecuting Deryni. Someone would be bound to suspect he'd been tampered with in that case. Either that, or there had better have been a well-documented and witnessed (by humans) "St. Paul on the Road to Damascus" sort of conversion experience!

It would be more efficient to persuade persecutors that one or more of their members was a Deryni in disguise, and arrange a lynching. This:- removes a threat- keeps other threats busy- if the victim is later proven to be innocent (quite possible) it undermines faith in the system (I'm particularly thinking of the popular Spanish belief that "the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people"), achieving the desired result of ending the persecutions, at least temporarily. Ensuring that the victims have traits to make people suspect this (whether being political enemies of the powers that be, wealthy, too young, too old, too rural, too urban, and so forth) would both making the lynching easier and increase the likelihood of backlash.

- finally, if everything falls apart and they work out that Deryni magic has been used to do this...you frame one of the persecutors as the 'Deryni' behind the scheme.